July 23

Neverwinter: Strongholds, the game’s seventh full-fledged expansion, gives adventurers and their guild the opportunity to reclaim an abandoned keep from the wild in our largest map yet. After over two years of adventuring all along the Sword Coast, adventurers will soon have a place to call home.

Have your first look at the process of building a stronghold, the aesthetic differences upon ranking up and the brand new PvP mode in our latest gameplay trailer!

June 11

We're happy to announce that our packs will be on-sale for the Steam Summer Sale. This sale will run from Thursday, June 11 at 10:00 am PDT through Monday, June 22 at 10:00 am PDT. Neverwinter players can get discounts on the following packs:

Scourge Warlock Booster Pack

Unleash the mysterious power of the Fated items with the Scourge Warlock Booster Pack! This pack is perfect for both new and veteran players who are looking to create a Scourge Warlock. This pack can only be purchased once.

Unleash the power of the Dragonborn and become a Legend in Neverwinter with the Dragonborn Pack! The Dragonborn Legend Pack contains exclusive access to the Dragonborn race and many items to aid you on your adventures through Module 4: Tyranny of Dragons. Prepare to battle Dragons with new artifacts, enchants and unique items specifically crafted for Dragon Slaying.

Whether beginning your adventure, or looking for that extra boost against the foes that Neverwinter has to offer, the unique items in the Neverwinter Packs will aid your efforts! This pack can only be purchased once!

Whether beginning your adventure, or looking for that extra boost against the foes that Neverwinter has to offer, the unique items in the Neverwinter Packs will aid your efforts! This pack can only be purchased once!

Reviews

“With its fast-paced combat and ubiquitously streamlined design, Neverwinter nails the concept of what an action-MMO should be.”
Polygon

“Neverwinter takes the most satisfying aspects of D&D's 4th edition in terms of combat and development, and turns it into a D&D adventure that left me squeeing with the joy of seeing my favorite monsters and mechanics.”
The Escapist

“Cryptic has created a finely tuned, smooth game that remembers the lessons its predecessors learned, and in the process bookends a long progeny of MMORPG development.”
GamesRadar

Just Updated

Neverwinter: Elemental Evil Includes

New Class: Oathbound Paladin

Level Cap Increased to 70

Four New Areas

Updated Epic Dungeons

And more!

The time has come, adventurers, to defend the Sword Coast from utter destruction once again!

The Cults of Elemental Evil have amassed their forces to take over the Sword Coast and reduce all life down to its four basic elements: Earth, Fire, Wind, and Water. With each element comes a terrifying coterie of cultists more dangerous than the next. Fortunately for the good citizens of Neverwinter, the Sword Coast factions have lent their strength to the cause of driving out the menacing cultists and saving the Sword Coast. In addition to these powerful factions, two heroes have emerged to drive an armored boot into the elemental backside of evil. Indeed, the Ranger Minsc and his miniature giant space hamster, Boo, have appeared and are ready to aid in the fight to save Neverwinter.

About This Game

Neverwinter is a free, action MMORPG based on the acclaimed Dungeons & Dragons fantasy roleplaying game. Epic stories, action combat and classic roleplaying await those heroes courageous enough to enter the fantastic world of Neverwinter!

Explore and defend one of the most beloved cities from the Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting as it rises from the ashes of destruction. This immersive MMORPG will take you from the besieged walls of the city to subterranean passageways in search of forgotten secrets and lost treasure.

Key Features

Completely Free-to-PlayYou don't have to pay to adventure. From 1 to the level cap, all playable content in Neverwinter is free for everyone to experience.

Infinite ContentNeverwinter comes with the Foundry, a dynamic toolset that provides you the game assets and a sandbox environment to create your own adventures. When your creation is complete, you can hook it up directly into the existing world for everyone in the community to play!

D&D ExperienceWhether you come from the tabletop game or the novels, Neverwinter has recreated many iconic classes, locations, and encounters that you might recognize. You might choose to adventure as a hearty Guardian Fighter, deceive foes as a Trickster Rogue, follow the righteous path as a Devoted Cleric, or more! On your journey through Neverwinter and the surrounding lands, you will face Kobolds, Beholders, Mimics, and other nasty creatures of the D&D universe.

I liked this game up until about four to six months ago. The game was fun to play, had some intuitive controls, and had graphics that I've never seen in another MMO.

However, it has turned into nothing but a money grab.

The devs have made absolutely abismal design choices, and have made no indication that they're going to stop. The most recent is Module 6, which was chocked full of awful surprises. It raised he level cap, but in order to get to it you were stripped of your epic/legendary gear that you JUST obtained through the last module released four months prior. On top of this, the new maps that you have to play through to get there are a massive grind, made from minimally reworked content. Endgame content was made virtually impossible, and was filled with bugs.

Back to the money grab though. Basically, what it comes down to, is that this game belongs to Cryptic Studios. They've made that abundantly clear. It doesn't belong to the players a single bit. ANY purchase you make belongs to them, and they have a right to change the parameters of that purchase at any time; for instance, the bags from the cash shop that WERE bound to your account were just changed to be bound to character on equip. Considering that your character, given they have an empty bag slot, will automatically put it on when you purchase it, this basically means that the bags are now bind-to-character-on-purchase.

Why would they make such a change? What does it fix? Well, I have the answer for you: It sells their bags. Or so they think. With this "patch," they released a bag with a few more slots on the cash shop.

Mind you, this patch was added AFTER a new dev acknowledged all the problems with their pre-alpha-quality module, and said that he would "work hard" to "fix the problems on hand." His first action was to fix almost nothing that anyone had complaints about, and try to score Cryptic some more cash.

This game is just too wildly inconsistant. Even purchases that I've made have been changed. I purchased the Bahamut Legacy pack off of the cash shop, because it came with a title, some costume weapons (or "transmutes" as they're called), and a companion. Up until recently, these weapons were reclaimable on any character multiple times, in case you wanted to get your free weapon change at any level. This is the case no longer. If you want your weapon to have the Bahamut style, you must now spend an excess of Astral Diamonds to transmute your new weapon into your old, crappy one.

Cryptic is not about customer convenience. They are about THEIR convenience, and nothing else. Any and all of their "convenience" items are slowly being made as inconvenient as humanly possible, given they aren't already. I wouldn't be surprised if account-wide mounts were made to be purchased on each individual character in an upcoming patch.

TL;DR, if you're going to spend your money on an MMO, don't spend it on a free one, and ESPECIALLY don't spend it on this one. I can't stress that enough. Any purchases you make will be nullified in some future patch. Go buy a subscription to WoW or something, it'll cost you less in the long run. And you can get all the mounts NWO ripped off of it for free with the full game.

This was probably my favorite MMO for quite some time. I love the combat in the game, and it is still the standard for which I hold other MMO-type games too. The Cleric Class (my personal favorite) is probably some of the best I've seen in a game.

But it's turned into a total cashgrab game.

I've stopped playing for a while now, but all the events that I took part in during the last few months I played were something that you'd have to grind for the entirety of the event to even have a hope of getting a chance at some of the end-items. Of course, if you wanted to drop some cash on it you could increase your chances.

They've got an incredbly great system in place for a lot of things, but the game got too greedy for me. Which is sad, considering how much fun I've had with it.

EDIT: For izzy4020[ECDC]I most certainly did spend money on the game. I don't fault any game for trying to make money. It's when games try to make participating in the game cost money in a FTP game. It was getting to the point (when I stopped) that every event they had took a full weekend of grinding to get a decent prize. I can hear you say, "Oh, you aren't entitled to things! It's free to play! You should enjoy whatever you get from it!"

That's the issue. To me, it seemed like as the events grew harder to achieve, the more they started introducing "bonuses" to make the events easier. The events started having better loot once that started as well.

I still ♥♥♥♥ing love the game, and want to go back to it at some point. But it got god damn greedy. I spent money on it in order to have some things made slightly easier (like traveling), but it just started to feel dirty to me. Of course, there were other things that drove me from the game (Faction Drama), but feeling like I had to pay money to participate in events was ♥♥♥♥♥♥ to me.

I still hold the mechanics of the game as the best MMO I've played. I plan on playing it again. I just want better for it..

Nevermind my playtime, as i have played this game since early beta (back when healing aggro wasnt fixed and clerics were the tanks, the top players were farming Castle Never with 11k Gear Score, etc). I have +15 days of playtime on several characters, i own all classes at max level and a least decently geared up, having tried several specs for most of them. I have played the hardest dungeons sucessfully since beta and mastered 3 of the many available classes (for PvE).

Most reviews of this game are either very good or very bad, ill try to balance mine. If you dont feel like reading the entire review just read the end.

Lets start with the pros:

-Its a very fun game. Combat is easy to get, but fast and still challenging, while being adictive. Endgame bosses can and will 1 shot you if you screw up.-The classes are very different from each others, each one has its perks, and some of them are extremely fun to play.-The background lore is right on WoW level. -There's new content like, every 6 months.-Foundry quests, made by users for users.-Leveling doesnt take too long, but its not too quick either. Its just right on spot.-You dont have 4 bars of abilities like in wow for example, its much simpler. You have 2 spammable At wills spells (mouse buttons), 3 Encounter skills (Q,E,R) that usually have average cooldowns, and 2 dailies that require you to fill a bar to use. All classes have a special effect on TAB button, and you have a key (usually 5, 6 or 7 on your keyboard) to use your primary artifact. However you have many skills to slot on those few spots, so your rotation and playstyle are very customizable. For example, on my CW (Control Mage), with my rotation, i could keep 100% uptime of CC on packs of mobs if i played it perfectly, while still dealing top damage.-The community isnt bad at all. Ive made some good friends, as most players are older than the average gamer.-You can get anything in the game without paying a cent. Just get ready for the massive grind.

The Cons:-PvP is rly messed up. Some players went all out on P2W, and are packing the most ultimate enchants, which you will never get even close to, since 1 of them is worth more than the average player's account, and the best armor available. They'll steamroll you so hard that you wont even have time to bite the pillow. And some classes are just too strong.-PvE is pretty meh. The old dungeons are useless and empty due to the release of the latest +25man "raid", which consists on a zerg rush of people dealing damage. The drop chances for lower tier gear (from the older dungeons) are good, so basically you're being "forced" to do that zerg rush. Oh and i was unable to do that with my friends. Going in party wasnt working, it was random for everyone.-Too much currency. There are literally +50 types of currency or tokens you can use, and most of them are useless.-Cryptic doesnt listen to the community, and they are very incompetent. They enforce their changes even thou 95% of the people disagree with them. A dungeon was impossible to finish for like 2 weeks because the item used to enter the boss room was missing. Dunno why they didnt just disable it, instead it was running but you couldnt finish it. They usually fix something and break something else with each patch.-The game pulls so much out of the computer that i had to buy a new fan (mine got busted from working 24/7, and i had my graphics pretty low. I can play most games with medium or high definitions). Some players using high end machines get like 40 fps with low graphics. Too much bad coding, and on top of it, graphics arent even that good on high settings.-The healer role is basically disappearing. You can have your tank run a toggle skill called Knight's Valor. This allows him to take half the damage for the party, and since everyone else just stacks lifesteal....Instead, the DPS Clerics came into scene and became mainstream (in PvE and PvP) after being buffed pretty hard. LOL!-The Foundry. I know i listed this as a pro. But its also a con, since it demonstrates the lack of courage (or brains) of the team behind this game. They could easily give the players tools to make their own dungeons and bosses. It would set this game apart from the competition and put it on a whole new level. It would be the next level of mmo's. Instead they refused to do it, and repeatedly release new content full of grind, grind, grind until your eyes bleed.-The Carpal tunnel inducing mechanics and grind in this game are over 9000. Seriously.-The bots and exploits. There are bots everywhere. Cryptic isnt rly doing much about it, and when it does, it hurts the community. And some people exploited so hard they had hundreds of million astral diamonds (the most used in game currency), while the average player doesnt reach 200k. The most known exploit is laughable as it shows how bad the people programming this game are. This happened like a year ago and its known as Caturday (happened on saturday and everyone was walking around with cat pets, which are expensive). If you entered negative values while bidding on AH, you would get those many astral diamonds back. Everyone was doing it.I dont even have words for how amateurish this is. An intern would do better. I could do better and i havent programmed in 3 years. They rolled back the servers a day, but sincerely, the damage was done already, and not many people were banned or punished, they just kept rolling on their rich and packed accounts and ruined the economy of the game.

In the end, this is a game that had a fantastic potential, and could have been the "next" mmo. But it was given to people that didnt had the ability to take it there, and honestly, its getting worse each expansion, with huge lack of imagination that results in endless daily grind, and ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bugs that are a reflection of their inability to put their "duh" ideias into practice.

Its not a bad game at all, its fun and adictive, and easy to play but hard to master; but you will struggle to reach the real items without paying; the grind is insane and getting worse; and finally, the company behind the game sucks really bad, at almost every level. It wont be hard for you to find something else better to play within the genre.

Pros:- graphics is good (when they're loaded properly on server), though not perfect even on Ultra- Combat is fast and fluid (better than TERA)- Story and Lore is just amazing - some NPCs are pretty funny- somewhat acceptable F2P model>>You can beat the game without spending a dime; all you need for sacrifice is time and a lot of Gear Score points.- challenging and difficult maps (good for end-game players)- good community (I love their Facebook page!)

Cons:- skipped the DLC (HotN and GP are too expensive)- some quest items are even RNG-based- LAG EVERYWHERE- crap maintanence team. - Arc/Gateway website is buggy.- Frequent login issue- Server rubberbands like h377, making game unplayable.- sometimes buggy- feels P2W in PVP (those that paid for Slot enchantment/Weapon-Armor specials/Legendary gears have a high advantage due to high GS)- Poor guilds system. Was invited to a Guild after Mod 2's release and months later that Guild died. It's still there, but the GL abandoned the game, and rarely anyone but me logged in every day. - You actually have to buy some pack to play some exclusive race. And they're overly expensive. If you're going to play the upcoming XB1 version and you previously bought the DLC race packs, you have to buy it again. i.e Gold/Metal/regular Dragonborn, Wood/Moon Elf, or the MR Drow. - Some class are just unbalanced (CW, SW, and TRs are WAY TOO OP!!!) - Runestones/Enchantments/Weapon-Armor Specials feels P2W at high rank. The success gap between 5, 6, and 7 is just staggering. Also, Armor/Weapon Enchantments upgrades are always at 1% success PLUS ANOTHER ENCHANTMENT, forcing you to buy Coal Wards at $10 each. The Shards needed to forge an A/W Enchantment are rare to epic Dungeon drops. - the best looking/stats companions and mounts are usually in the Zen store, at a ridiculous high price ($30-$45). - Overall RNG is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. The gloves/MH in Mod3 IWD and Mod4-5's Artifact Gear drops are the best examples. You grind for months and still not get a decent loot while the lucky ones do. I spent some Zen cash on lockboxes and was lucky to get an Owlbear Artifact belt (very decent one) for my GWF. Still grinding Mod5 quest, eLOL, and eSoT for the Legendary Artifact Sword (Golden Dragons series). - annoying chat. Everyday I login, a handful of new Goldspammers, bots, Trade Frauds, and Fake Selling Accounts starts PMing me with scamming Broken English item sale crap... ON MY CHAT BAR!!!!! Used to take part of the [NW_Legit_Community] chat subscription group but now it's just full of elites talking about the latest stuff; the newbs and low-GS players have no idea what's going on.

I'll give a "No" recommendation for now. Until the company wakes up from their greed-plague heads, I'll re-consider.

From my limited experience in this game.... I can say that it is fun IF you have the money to spend on it. If not, then pass by this game as you will be frustrated extremely quickly.

Pros:

Excellent combat system (maybe the best in mmos)Runs well on most systemsDecently engaging storylineFun boss fights

Cons:

Grind- grind-grind on instance based mapsWill get VERY expensive if you want to be competitive in PVPUnbalanced PVP modeVery short campaign storyRecycled maps in many instances throughout modulesTerrible customer support